2024 Kia Carnival GT-Line Lite review

• Doors and Seats

  

  NA

• Engine

  

  NA

• Engine Power

  

  148kW, 440Nm

• Fuel

  

  Diesel 6.5L/100KM

• Transmission

  

  NA

• Warranty

  

  NA

• Ancap Safety

  

  5/5 star (2021)

Family Cars Guide

You may not like it, but a people mover is what peak practicality looks like – this is the ideal family car shape.

For everyone out there thinking about buying a large, three-row SUV, I’m arguing you shouldn’t – you should instead buy a people mover like this 2024 Kia Carnival.

And I know, there is a stigma that minivans like the Carnival are daggy, passé, and straight-up uncool, but set aside your preconceived notions because I’m about to lay out why this Kia is one of the best – if not the best – family car options available right now.

The Carnival has been a staple in Kia Australia showrooms since 1999, and it might surprise you to know it has been a consistent top-seller for the last 25 years.

Yes, there were models like the Toyota Tarago and Honda Odyssey that put up a good fight, but those Japanese people movers are now dead, leaving the Carnival to reign supreme.

Now in its fourth iteration, this 2024 Carnival has been updated to offer more powertrain options, sharper styling, and other key changes to keep things fresh.

Pricing for the Carnival now kicks off at $50,150 before on-road costs for the S grade in petrol form, while the Sport trim is $56,050, the Sport+ is $62,380, the GT-Line Lite is $66,350, and the GT-Line is $70,680.

All versions are available with a diesel too, adding $2230 to the asking price, while a single high-spec Hybrid is also new this year priced at $76,210 plus on-road costs.

The Carnival I have with me here is the diesel-powered GT-Line Lite, making it the penultimate grade and ringing the till up to $68,580.

In terms of standard equipment, in all grades, you get eight seats, LED headlights, and safety equipment highlights such as autonomous emergency braking, rear cross-traffic alert, and blind-spot monitoring.

But added in the GT-Line Lite there are 19-inch wheels and a dual sunroof, which build on the features you get in lower grades like the 12.3-inch infotainment touchscreen, synthetic leather interior, a wireless smartphone charger, in-built satellite navigation, digital radio, tri-zone climate control, a 12.3-inch digital instrument cluster, blind-spot view monitor, power-sliding rear doors, heated front and rear outboard seats, power-adjustable front seats, a surround-view monitor, rear privacy glass, and a powered tailgate.

Is it a lot to spend? Well, no, not for a people mover with this much equipment.

Rivals include the Hyundai Staria (from $49,500) and LDV Mifa (from $53,990 drive-away), but even looking at three-row SUVs like the Hyundai Santa Fe, Nissan Pathfinder, and Toyota Kluger, you’d be paying around this much anyway for a similar level of equipment, and you’d miss out on the Carnival’s best family car feature.

For overloaded parents (both physically and metaphorically) the Kia Carnival’s best feature is powered rear sliding doors!

Seriously, they make it so dang convenient with kids, because you never have to worry about having enough space to open the door to get your little gremlins in and out.

And there are so many options to open and close them – some of which you can do without even leaving the driver’s seat.

You can pull the handle and let the Carnival do the work for you, or you can use the buttons on the key fob, or you can press the button on the inside of the B-pillar to slide the doors shut. But there are also buttons near the steering wheel, so if your kids are old enough to exit by themselves, you don’t even have to brave the cold Melbourne winter mornings at school drop-off.

A byproduct of these large sliding doors, however, is that the Carnival does look like a big box on wheels.

Measuring 5155mm long, 1995mm wide, 1775mm tall, and with a 3090mm wheelbase, the Carnival is certainly imposing on the road.

But credit where credit is due, the designers at Kia have done their best to spruce up the Carnival’s styling to be a little more Dominic Torreto ‘family’ than Clark Griswold.

Will the 2024 Kia Carnival convert the people-mover haters? Not on aesthetics alone, but people movers – and this model in particular – have certainly come a long way.

In the front seats, it feels positively palatial in the Carnival. There is a serious amount of room, even rivalling full-sized American pick-ups like the Ford F-150 and Chevrolet Silverado that take up far more room on the road.

And the fittings and finishes feel premium and upmarket too, including this car’s wonderful two-tone look, soft leather for the steering wheel and T-bar shifter, and massive 12.3-inch infotainment touchscreen.

This GT-Line Lite also features a new 12.3-inch digital instrument cluster, helping elevate the cabin further, but I’d like to see more customisation options available.

As it stands now, you have a choice between round dials or a minimalist theme, with a handful of colour choices, but it’s just a screen, I want to see wilder options on offer!

Up front, practicality is also a boon with massive door pockets that can swallow a large bottle, two large cupholders, a gigantic tray that is split with a wireless charger on one side, and a deep underarm storage cubby.

But the best seats in the Carnival might actually be in the second row, as the seats are just as plush and comfortable as the front.

The seats slide forward and backward, as well as recline, giving you plenty of options to get comfortable.

Amenities include back-seat map pockets, retractable sunblinds, roof-mounted air vents, climate-control buttons, and charging ports.

If I had to criticise anything back here, I’d say the split sunroof feels a bit cheap, as a single panoramic roof would be much more premium, but I understand why that couldn’t be done given the position of the vents.

However, the coolest thing in the second row might be the fact that these outboard seats are pseudo captain’s chairs.

The middle seat can fold down, revealing cupholders and a large tray, but that seat can slide back to give you much more thigh and shoulder room – if you so wish.

But the cherry on top is that this seat is reversible and removable, giving you more options with how you want to arrange your chairs.

In the third row, space is plentiful, but you will start to feel the pinch if you put three adults abreast.

The middle-position seatbelt comes down from the roof, which eats into space when maxing out the third row, but for large families, there are also ISOFIX points in the outboard positions.

And because the third-row windows are smaller, it can feel claustrophobic and cramped, but amenities include generous cupholders, USB-C charging ports, speakers, air vents and sunblinds.

Popping the sizeable boot of the Carnival will reveal space for a substantial 627 litres of volume with all three rows in place. This makes it more capacious than the boot of popular family SUVs like the Mazda CX-5 and Toyota RAV4, while still seating eight passengers.

However, while it sounds like a lot of space on paper, the reality is that Kia can get to this big volume number because of the deep boot floor cut-out, so the storage space is more vertical than horizontal.

What this means is that the usual family staple, the pram, might not fit depending on how compact it folds down. Otherwise, you have to position a pram on its side or standing up to make it work.

And because the floor is so deep, it makes pulling out bulky and heavy items difficult because you have to lift it up to clear the lip.

But there is a good reason for the boot floor to be so deep, because the third-row seats fold down to fill the cavity and give you a flat boot floor and seating for five. The space swells to a massive 2827L, turning this minivan into, well, just a van.

In five-seat form, the Carnival has no problems with large family items, or family members, and is certainly more practical than a similarly priced three-row large SUV.

The 2024 Kia Carnival GT-Line Lite comes fitted with a 12.3-inch infotainment touchscreen that has functionality for wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. The system also features in-built satellite navigation, Bluetooth audio streaming, AM/FM/digital radio, and eight speakers.

However, with an always-on internet connection, the system can display weather forecasts and also has over-the-air updates.

Because of that connection, owners can pair their vehicle to the Kia Connect smartphone app for remote vehicle monitoring and basic functionality like remote climate control, remote locking, and sending GPS destinations straight to the car.

There are also a few quirky things with the infotainment software, like Kia’s Sounds of Nature feature if you ever want to listen to a running stream of water or the beach.

But the best part of the interior, aside from the space, might be the context-sensitive capacitive menu bar that can switch between shortcuts for the infotainment screen and climate controls. It’s a neat solution to keep the cabin free of buttons, looks totally sci-fi, and – most importantly – works intuitively and easily.

The 2024 Kia Carnival was awarded a maximum five-star ANCAP safety rating from testing of the pre-facelift model in 2021.

The Carnival performed particularly well in the adult and child occupant protection tests, notching 90 and 88 per cent results respectively.

The safety assist category was a strong result for Kia, with an 82 per cent score, while the vulnerable road user protection test was the weakest examination at 68 per cent.

The 2024 Kia Carnival GT-Line Lite comes fitted with an attractive list of safety equipment, but the most desirable features are available as standard across the people-mover line-up.

A reversing camera, high-beam assist, blind-spot detection, rear cross-traffic alert, lane-keep assist, adaptive cruise control, autonomous emergency braking (AEB), driver attention warning, safe exit assist, and a litany of airbags that extend to the third row are all features found in all 2024 Kia Carnival models.

Of course, stepping up to the GT-Line Lite grade like I have on test adds more features, such as a surround-view monitor, side parking sensors, and rear AEB, which are all nice-to-have features but not essential.

In my time with the car, the only safety system bugbear was with the driver attention warning system, which would often ping when doing a head check or looking across at the infotainment system.

The speed-limit warning was also overzealous, triggering the moment you creep over the posted speed limit.

Luckily, both systems can be adjusted to be less annoying, but they default to their original programming upon vehicle start-up.

Like all new Kia models, the 2024 Carnival comes with a seven-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty.

While this falls short of the 10-year assurance period offered by Mitsubishi, and MG, it exceeds the standard warranty of big brands like Toyota, Mazda, Ford, and Hyundai (five years/unlimited kilometres).

Scheduled service intervals – excluding the first free service at three months/3000km – for the Kia Carnival GT-Line Lite diesel are every 12 months or 15,000km, whichever occurs first.

According to Kia Australia’s capped-price servicing plan, the first five services (covering five years or 75,000km) will cost a total of $2851.

To insure, the 2024 Kia Carnival GT-Line Lite diesel will cost $2194.17 per annum based on a comparative quote for a 35-year-old male driver living in Chatswood, NSW. Insurance estimates may vary based on your location, driving history, and personal circumstances.

The diesel-powered Kia Carnival is quite frugal, officially returning just 6.5 litres per 100 kilometres in combined testing.

In my time with the car, I averaged 7.5L/100km, though my experience was heavily skewed towards inner-city driving commuting to and from work and dropping the kids to childcare.

This 7.5L/100km figure actually betters the official urban rating of 7.8L/100km, but of course, if you want the ultimate fuel-sipping Carnival, you should go for the hybrid.

Opting for the petrol V6 engine means fuel economy rises to 9.6L/100km, while the hybrid sips just 5.8L/100km.

It’s no secret that Kia Australia launched the fourth-generation Carnival in 2021 without the usual polish the brand has become known for. After all, there was that small thing called COVID that threw all the best-laid plans out the window.

But this updated Carnival is here to address those issues, and a big remediation point is the suspension and steering tune.

I wouldn’t call last year’s car uncomfortable by any stretch, but this new Carnival feels a touch smoother over bumps and road imperfections, and seems to regain its composure a fraction of a second quicker.

The handling is sharpened up a touch, not to sports car levels or anything, but the Carnival feels more confident and composed in a corner.

Is it a big enough change to upgrade if you own a pre-updated Carnival? I don’t think so, but it’s clear the new Carnival is the best handling and most capable in terms of steering and body control.

And this particular Carnival backs that up with a peppy 2.2-litre turbo-diesel engine – outputting 148kW and 440Nm to the front wheels via an eight-speed automatic transmission – that delivers maximum torque from early in the rev band.

And if that doesn’t sound too exciting, well, this Carnival’s outputs are nearly more than a match for the macho Ford Ranger, Toyota HiLux, Isuzu D-Max, and other popular dual-cab utes.

And because it weighs about the same as a one-tonne dual-cab, performance is comparable too, so you shouldn't necessarily think you can gain a head-start on traffic off the line.

It means this Carnival feels punchy and peppy straight when moving off, but – like its handling characteristic – strays more towards comfort than outright performance.

This powertrain never gives you a sudden burst of performance, nor is it eager to rev all the way out to redline.

Instead, the engine and this eight-speed automatic transmission are tuned for comfort and predictability, making it effortless and easy to drive regardless of speed.

There are four drive modes available to round out the driving experience, with Eco being the smoothest, but even in the most hardcore setting, Sport doesn’t feel exactly lively.

The suspension tune is geared towards comfort more than anything else, and does introduce a bit of bounciness into the cabin when road surfaces are uneven.

But as an entire package, the Carnival handles well for a car of this size and shape.

The 2024 Kia Carnival GT-Line Lite is rated to tow a maximum braked capacity of 2000kg and an unbraked figure of 750kg.

This would be enough for a small trailer, or even a small caravan, and with the punchy 2.2-litre turbo-diesel engine under the bonnet, the people mover should feel spry enough even while hauling.

In fact, Kia is going to use a variation of this engine for its upcoming Tasman ute, which should offer better towing figures.

Owners should keep in mind the 725kg payload capacity, though, lest they overload the Carnival if, say for example, all seats were occupied by adults.

The Kia Carnival is a bit of an oxymoron as its daggy reputation might be the ultimate turn-off, but it also has the space to cart around even the biggest of families in comfort.

But set that aside, and the Carnival offers a level of practicality, comfort, and equipment that is hard to match – especially in GT-Line Lite form.

I can understand why some buyers would be more attracted to a large SUV if they did a bit of off-roading or towing, but in terms of family cars, the Kia Carnival might be the ultimate one.

Now that the COVID-related vehicle shortages are mostly over, Kia Australia has ample supply of the Carnival people mover, though this depends on the exact colour and specification you are after.

To stay up to date on what Kia has on hand, you should always check with your nearest dealership, which you can find here.

Otherwise, you can browse Drive Marketplace for all Kia models available for sale, and for all the latest news from the brand, click here.

Family Cars Guide

Tung Nguyen has been in the automotive journalism industry for over a decade, cutting his teeth at various publications before finding himself at Drive in 2024. With experience in news, feature, review, and advice writing, as well as video presentation skills, Tung is a do-it-all content creator. Tung’s love of cars first started as a child watching Transformers on Saturday mornings, as well as countless hours on PlayStation’s Gran Turismo, meaning his dream car is a Nissan GT-R, with a Liberty Walk widebody kit, of course.

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